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By Andrew LaVallee
Nambu Network, an online media company that operates Tr.im, said it is shutting the link-shortening service down after it ran out of financing options.
Tr.im competes with Bit.ly and TinyURL in offering shortened versions of long URLs that users can use on sites like Twitter, which limits the number of characters in each update.
“Tr.im did well for what it was, but, alas, it was not enough,” said Eric Woodward, Nambu’s chief executive, in a blog post. “We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it, or pay its network costs, which are not inconsequential.”
The company approached potential investors but found no takers, he said, and Tr.im customers aren’t willing to pay for the service.
Mr. Woodward added that Twitter’s use of Bit.ly as its default shortener made it even harder to compete. “Twitter has all but sapped us of any last energy to double-down and develop tr.im further,” he said. “What is the point? With bit.ly the Twitter default, and with us having no inside connection to Twitter, tr.im will lose over the the long-run no matter how good it may or may not be at this moment, or in the future.”
